Roll with the Punches (26 page)

"So why are you Ed
and
Dal?" I said, "Why two names? Multiple personality? Favorite cartoon character? No. Let me guess. Some teacher thought you were a
Doll
?" I finally slowed the swing.

"Hint: My birthday's May 15, 1970. Figure it out, Booty Girl." He stood up in front of me, pulling my swing chains way high until I was nose to nose with him, those intense eyes boring right through all the masks I showed the world, seeing the inner me.

He let go and I sailed off low, high, low, then back up to his face for the barest second. He ran around behind me and pushed me hard. I gulped in cool air and flew, exhilarated. Back and forth, high and low. Ah, the pleasures of childhood. Which had included … It wasn't until after I jumped out and landed on my left side in the grass that I remembered my recent rink fall. "Ow!"

He rushed up to my prone form looking worried and delighted at the same time. "My God. You okay? Why’d you jump?" He took my hand.

“Used to be fun.” I lay back on the cool grass, glad of my sweatshirt. Arms. Check. Legs. Check. Fingers. They wiggled in his warm hand. "It was easier when I was six. Ouch." I grunted. "Fresh bruise from the rink."

"You sure?" He lay down next to me, his head propped on an elbow, and held up three fingers. "How many?"

"Twelve." I sat up. "I'm okay."

"Whew. Never knew swinging was so dangerous." His thumb caressed my shoulder.

"I should get back to bed. I'm tired." I started to rise.

"Oh, not yet. Please?"

Hah! I had him. "Fine. Tell me about your names and I'll stay five minutes."

"Guess.”

I sat down. "Okay, May 1970. You were conceived on the moon July 20, 1969. Your mom stowed away with Neil Armstrong in that moon suit and the real news was that they took one small shtup for man and one giant conception for mankind that day."

He laughed. "You're warm."

"Okay. You're Nixon's love child by Buffy Saint Marie?"

"May 1970 is nine months after Woodstock." He grinned and stroked my arm. "Mom went as a flower child, a Who groupie."

"What?"

"No, Who. She really, I mean
really
liked The Who."

"Why? Which one?" The hand moved to my neck and I lay down to give it more access. "Uh, Roger Daltrey? Peter Townsend? Oh, magic hands."

He sighed. "My full name is Entwhistle Daltrey Townsend Moon Greenweed Baker.”

My eyes popped. "So one of them had blue eyes. Which one?"

"Who knows?" he said.

I groaned. "No puns." God, the man's hands were genius, gliding around where I least expected them.

"So, Booty-Ka, aren't you self-conscious when everyone watches your—" He put a hand on my hip and swooped in for another of those surprise kisses, like an eagle swooping down for the kill.

I felt like Sally Field at the Oscars.
You like me. You really like me
.
You're so good with Music Man, and I'm such a flake.
That kiss got away from both of us, getting warm and deep and making little explosions behind my eyeballs. My backside, being caressed, ignited and sent a chain reaction of warm lava flows all over, to parts of me that had been pretty solid for a long time.

He stopped. "Whoops. I may be contagious."

"Nope. You're not. I checked." I dove back in, and this kiss went all velvety black and merged with the dark trees, forever changing the implications of those four innocent letters in my mind. The black
K
became Dal's long hair that felt like silk to my fingers. The white
I
was the new moon and the silver
S'
s were his two vampire-like eyes flashing silver in that instant before all-consuming contact. Not too bad, until I realized that the melting parts at my inner core were multi-colored and had little paper labels sticking up from the molten wax proclaiming:
Crayola
.

My soul was made of crayons.

A while later, he was on top of me in the grass, still demonstrating that consummate eagle kissing skill and caressing parts of me farther and farther south, to which I responded as any desperate woman who hadn't had sex in a
looong
time would.

I giggled.

"What?" Men hate giggling during passion.

"Um, I was just thinking how I'd write this. I'm sort of new in the—um—erotica genre, and I haven't written that many straight love scenes." My finger traced his jaw line.

He frowned. "Straight? As opposed to—?"

"Between a werewolf and a ghost, of course."

"Oh. Well, maybe you'd say I caught you and had my way with you on the grass after you leaped for freedom from the swing." He nibbled my neck.

Melt, melt. "No. That'd make me a victim. It'd be better if I caught you, and bit your neck and turned you into a—wait, do vampires take girls' shirts off?"

My shirt now flew to the damp grass and an eager mouth traced paths around my abundant gifts. That tongue was fantastic. Oh bliss. My inner tattooed skate slut genie had squeezed out of her bottle and was belly-dancing with abandon.

"Do you write fantasy or erotica?" he murmured.

"Yeah," I said.

"Are you taking notes?"

"Mm-hmm. I'm an innocent skate slut, stripped and thrown on the damp grass by an evil, leering vampire with a sinister plan.”

"Damp?" The vampire grabbed my sweatshirt and tucked it between me and the damp ground.

"That's too nice. Vampires aren't nice," I said.

"Okay." He kissed a trail up of the mountains of my physique, reached a peak, and tortured it. My back arched, I clutched his hair, and tingles shot all over the place from his lips to all my highest and lowest elevations, heating my inner crayon puddle into multi-colored molten magma.

"Delete Dracula. Type in Vulcan," I squeaked.

His hands took over appreciating my breasts while his lips did wild things to my neck.

"Oh, dear God. More. More."

"Booty Lady." He pinned me against his whole length and kissed me like a sailor on leave. His fingers went to the button on my jeans. Boy, Harley would be so proud of my spontaneity.

Oops. Harley had dibs. And I had James. I was
such
a slut.

Abruptly, I broke the kiss and sat up just as two big drops of water plopped on my arms. The weather had gone from hot and dry to cool and wet in just hours. "Raining!" I snagged my shirt. "So why are you Ed?"

He flopped back, eyes still on my naked chest. "Well, my mom called me Moon, which kinda suits you better than me.”

The rain got serious as I put my shirt back on and stood. "And?"

He sighed. "My first two initials.
E. D
. Mom married Jim Baker when I was four. He adopted me. And when she went back to Minnesota, I stayed here to finish high school, where I was Ed. Now I prefer Daltrey." Then he looked gleeful. "Oh. Guess what I found in your dad's drawer."

"A condom?"

His brows went up. "No, these." He pulled an envelope of pictures from his sweats pocket. I reached for them, but his arms were longer. Somehow, he pulled me back down and we rolled around in the damp grass again. I ended up on top, with some urgent things pulsing beneath me and rain soaking my shirt. His eyes grew dark and serious.

Shit! The dibs. Oh, man. I grabbed the wet envelope and escaped to the covered patio, with Dal close behind. The pictures were of me as a kid with no front teeth and skinned knees. The way I'd look again soon if Harley knew I'd kissed her guy.

Stomach sinking for so many reasons, I said, "What did you think of Wonder Woman at the rink tonight?"

"She's cute.”

Crap. "Let's go in," I said.

"Your room or mine?" He grinned.

I sighed. "(A) I barely know you. And (B) we've never even had a date. So (C) how do I know you're not rude or arrogant or a con man?"

He pulled me close again. "I thought you were pretty sure I was all three."

God, his hands felt so good around my waist. Actually, they felt pretty marvelous anywhere on me. "And (D) there's James.”

He nodded, massaging my back. "Your pet slug?"

"I'm sort of seeing him." I dodged a kiss, resting my head on his chest.

"When you're not sleeping with me in cars." He folded me into a hug.

"And (E) Harley," I said to his shirt.

"Geez. Another guy? Wow, you do get around."

"No, Harley's my best friend, Wonder Woman. She's been in a funk about guys for over a year now. Seriously depressed. Zoloft and everything. But when she saw you tonight, she perked right up."

"So …" He tilted up my chin, a glint in his eyes. "I'm her romantic image of a noble savage? You didn't tell her I'm the brave from hell?"

I smiled. "It doesn't matter. She dibsed you tonight."

His lips pursed under laughing eyes. "Is that like voodoo?"

"No, like 'I saw him first.' She's going to say, though I swear I'd never do such a thing, she'll say I seduced you the minute she dibsed you. And boy will she be pissed. She might break my head, or go jump off something. She jumped off her car once." I tried to push away, but his arms stayed steady and warm around me.

"All this jumping—her out of cars, you out of the swing to get my attention. You're both nuts, right?" He smiled.

"I was jumping for fun! And excuse me.
You
grabbed
me
."

"I thought it was mutual." He squeezed me.

"That's a stale excuse as far as Harley’s concerned. See, it was mutual the other times, when we were seventeen, nineteen, and, let's see, twenty-eight."

"You stole three guys from her?" His eyes widened.

"I didn't steal them! They'd already left her. And they weren't really interested in her
or
me. I dated the first two for two weeks each, and the last one thought he was my soul-mate for a whole ten minutes."

He laughed. "But she still thinks you stole them. Why?"

I shrugged.

He said, "Aww. She's so cute. Why's she worried? Aren't there lots of guys running after her?"

"Enough of this 'cute' talk about Harley. She's average-looking at best, Dal Baker. And I didn't even want her old boyfriends." I fingered the neck of his sweatshirt. "They were boring. But Harley sees a pretty face and pounces head first, trying to lay long-term foundations with short-term guys.”

"Me included?"

"When she starts pouring concrete around your feet, you'll run, too."

He walked me toward the house.

I said, "Trust me. Men are like house flies. One toe hits Harley's wet cement and they fly right off to me. I must smell like a mango."

"Yeah. One tasty piece of fruit." He backed me up against the patio door and trapped me there. "Do
my
dibs on you count? I saw you first. Can't we—mmm—make a little fruit salad?"

"Don't touch the produce or Harley will kill me." I ducked out from under his arms and sat on a lounge chair.

He sat on the chaise by me, an arm around my shoulders. "What if I actually prefer mangos? What if we don't tell her?"

But what if I don't want to be just a piece of fruit anymore?

I turned, and he zoomed in and planted another long, hard kiss on me, leaning us both back onto the chair. Whoa momma. I didn't seem able to let go. But I had to. After what seemed like an hour of bliss, I pulled away, jumped up, and ran for the back door. Damn. Locked. The front door was, too. And the garage was tight as a drum. Music Man had made the rounds again, and we'd missed him.

"What's in your pocket?" I asked, shivering on the front porch step, our last stop.

He leered. "What do you think?"

My resolve was slipping. "No cash? Credit card? Hotel key?"

"No. I sleep in these pants. When I'm alone.”

Boy. Why did those ratty old sweats look so good?

"Same here. Wait. Dad's car key. You think his bench seats recline?"

We laughed and ran through the downpour for the old clunker. But the key I’d just found in his room didn't fit that car.

"The neighbors?" he said, leaning on the wet car.

"It's 3:00 in the morning. Can you see Arlene's face when I wake her to ask for a double bed? Wait this car key looks familiar."

So we spent another chilly night tossing on narrow bucket seats in my car, rain clunking on the fiberglass roof this time, our budding lust thwarted by a steering wheel and a dibs.

Tuesday morning, I woke up alone in the Honda's back seat with a headache and permanent seat belt latch indentations on my kidneys. A sweet memory made my mouth curl at the corners and my body tingle before I remembered The Dibs. I went inside and saw Dal on the back patio, stretched out on a lounge chair, an arm flung across his eyes against the rising sun. He must have needed sleep too badly to stay in the car.

I helped Music Man start his bacon and eggs. Then Violeta Diaz, a short, hefty lady with a monster mole on her forehead, showed up for the day shift with Dad. I gave her the nickel tour and left without waking Dal since his class didn't start until afternoon.

He'd offered to watch Music Man in the evening so I could go to my writers' group. Except I'd written nothing new for the group. I put pen to paper on my lunch hour and wrote three pages of a trite love scene with ill-disguised characters making out in a back yard. In the rain.

My research queries on Reynard Jackson and Pablo Reynaldo had all been dead ends. I googled other sources, but had little hope. James didn't call.

Heading home from work at 3:30, I got a call from the caregiver agency. Music Man had complained of dizziness and taken two naps already today. He'd awakened from each one claiming it was morning and demanding a huge breakfast of eggs and bacon. He had eaten so much at his third breakfast that he had thrown up.

Each time the caregiver had cleaned up the kitchen, Dad had rearranged things on all the surfaces in the house. He had hidden Ms. Diaz's wallet and keys in his bedroom dresser, and she was now ready to charge him with stealing.

The agency would be sending someone else tomorrow.

Too angry to face the aging delinquent, I got Arlene to watch him until Dal returned, and I visited my mother in the rehab facility. She looked a little better and was able to walk without fainting. I didn't tell her about Music Man's adventures with caregivers. Why worry her? Or my adventures with the Indian. None of her beeswax.